Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore

Luis J. Rodriguez (Mixcoatl Itztlacuiloh) and Trini Rodriguez (Tlazohteotl) are co-founders of Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore, the only bookstore and cultural center in the Northeast San Fernando Valley which has a population of 500,000. Run by community members, the center focuses on transformative healing through ancestral knowledge, the arts, literacy and creative engagement.

Find the medicine

“As Indigenous people we understood healing was in everything and everywhere. It’s knowing how to find the medicine yourself, in however you imagine the divine. We intentionally organized Tía Chucha’s to be guided by the ancestral knowledge that allows us to tap into this understanding. A lot of healing is going on there even though it may not be recognized as such, particularly what you would call emotional psychological healing. Trauma is pretty evident in this community. There’s a half a million people in the Northeast Valley and 80% are Mexican and Central American. Pacoima, one of the poorest communities in L.A. county, is there. It’s a community with a lot of need, but we brought in the arts as a way to get people to understand that in times of chaos, when we’re caught up in a crisis, creativity is a path out of it. In turn, [it] brings in the kind of order that meets the challenges of what people are facing. And to me, that’s important. To let people understand that healing is something that we have within our grasp.”

—Luis J. Rodriguez, co-founder

See the beauty

“At a writing circle, for instance, you think, oh, you’re just going to write poetry. But of course, what comes out in the writing is all the things you’re contending with, whether it’s personal or financial or just past experiences. In the process, people share their stories and see themselves in each other. So, it really breaks down the isolation and alienation that a lot of times our communities find themselves in, either because of policies that exclude them or misinformation that scapegoats them as the reasons for our society’s issues. Sharing experiences shows the humanity of what we’re all trying to deal with. And that’s what the space primarily does. It creates a community environment to share and to see each other and to see the beauty that we all have regardless of the kind of challenges that we face day to day.”

—Trini Rodriguez, co-founder

LACDMH Strategic Plan Points: 1a.1 education, 1a.2 engagement, 1a.3 follow up, 1b.1 housing, 1b.2 kin, 1b.3 purpose, 1c.1 assessment, 1c.2 service coordination, 1c.3 outpatient care, 2.3 restorative care, 4.2 organizational process, 4.3 organizational outcomes.